To understand China's growth potential and strategy, it's not enough just to calculate how many cars or clothes are produced and sold. A look into the country's vast desert area is necessary if one is to see the bigger picture.

On June 30, China completed a barrier belt along the southeastern edge of its fourth-largest desert – the Tengger Desert – in the northwestern Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region. In a report released on July 1, Xinhua news agency called the barrier belt a milestone in China's desertification control efforts.

The 153-kilometer belt in Ningxia, which is 10 to 38 kilometers wide, creates a formidable vegetation barrier against the eastward movement of the Tengger Desert, which spans about 43,000 square kilometers. In particular, the barrier belt will fix the dunes and prevent them from affecting the adjacent Yellow River area.

There are at least two things we can learn from this milestone desertification control project, both of which are related to China's growth potential and strategy.

First, the power to invent new things.

Although the efforts to fix the dunes with a barrier belt in Ningxia date back to the 1950s, when the straw checkerboard approach was invented to protect China's first desert railway, special progress has been made in the recent past, aided by the application of new technologies, including those that help improve straw checkerboards and develop artificial cyanobacteria soil crusts.

Compared with traditional straw checkerboards which are usually handmade and last about three years in practical use, the new versions weaved by recently invented machines are much tougher and last about six years after they are "planted" in the desert.

An article posted on the website of the Chinese Academy of Sciences on June 11 explains how cyanobacteria-dominated biological soil crusts (BSCs) help stabilize soil in arid areas.

"Cyanobacteria are foundational organisms in these crusts, using their trichomes and secreted extracellular polymeric substances (EPS) to bind soil particles. Their ability to move within soil layers is closely linked to crust formation and expansion," the article explains.

Despite the "magic" effect of cyanobacteria-dominated BSCs in fixing the dunes, it usually takes more than 10 years for such crusts to form under natural conditions, a Xinhua report published last June pointed out. However, a new technology recently developed by Chinese scientists has made it possible to form BSCs in just two to three years, as people can spray liquid cyanobacteria into the dunes that are fixed within those improved straw checkerboards.

Second, the readiness to share.

The completion of the 153-kilometer barrier belt is just the latest demonstration of China's relentless efforts in desertification control. CGTN (China Global Television Network) reported in June that in China, more than 24 million hectares of sandified areas have been turned into green land, and nearly 1.9 million hectares have been buffered against desertification since 2012. It further cited official data as saying that from 2000 to 2019, the total amount of wind-eroded soil in the country's major deserts and sandy land had declined by about 40 percent, and China has become the first nation to achieve zero growth in land degradation.

Xinhua has reported that, since signing the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification in 1994, China has continuously shared sand control experience, technologies and talent with the rest of the world. A latest example was the inauguration of the China-Central Asia desertification control cooperation center in June. The new center is based in Ningxia.

Also in June, a foreign ministry spokesperson said at a regular press conference that China stands ready to deepen cooperation in ecological and environmental protection with Central Asian countries and the rest of the world to jointly create more miracles of turning desert into oasis.

The spokesperson Guo Jiakun made the remarks when asked for more details on China and Central Asian countries' joint efforts to tackle the Aral Sea ecological crisis, a collaboration that brings green hope to the "dry tears" of Central Asia. Xinhua cited Guo as saying that since the first China-Central Asia Summit in 2023, China and Central Asian countries have carried out joint scientific exploration, worked on the improvement of saline-alkali land, and set up a demonstration zone of water-saving cotton fields, which have been welcomed by local people.

What China has to offer extends beyond dune-fixing technologies.

As a senior World Bank official noted last year, Ningxia's story is also one about economic growth. Valerie Hickey, global director of the World Bank's Environment Department, told Xinhua in an interview in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, that the most valuable takeaway from Ningxia's environmental efforts is to seize opportunities to "end poverty and grow the economy," by growing goji berries, making wines, and developing the solar industry in the arid land.

Indeed, China's constant progress in combating desertification is not just a story of technological breakthroughs. It's a story of green growth and common prosperity as well.